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CEDAR RAPIDS — The father of Melody Hoffman, who was kidnapped, beaten and fatally strangled last year, said Friday he didn’t know how to describe the pain he, her mother and their family have endured.

“I’m not sure words even have the power to described it,” T.J. Hoffman said during the sentencing of Dakota Van Patten, 19, of Cedar Rapids. “When a life is taken, it is not just a single thread that is cut — it is an entire tapestry torn apart. The death of a pregnant woman does not only end her story, but also the lineage of generations that came before it and yet to come.

“In this case, five bloodlines — centuries of ancestors who endured famine, plague, war and genocide — found their journe

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